Inside the mind of a murderer.What makes murderers do what they do? A BBC piece revealed that some murderers have reduced activity in their prefrontal cortex, which controls emotional impulses, and over-activity in their amygdala, which generates emotion. Also, if a person lacks a gene that produces MAOA, an enzyme involved in impulse control, they too are at a higher risk of violent behavior. Offering an additional perspective, neurologist Jim Fallon highlighted environmental factors, “If you’ve the high-risk form of the gene and you were abused early on in life, your chances of a life of crime are much higher.” (Watch Jim’s TED Talk, “Exploring the mind of a killer.”)

“My disability is not a curse.”Maysoon Zayid was featured in this week’s episode of “ In Deep Shift with Jonas Elrod” on OWN. She shares how, growing up in small-town New Jersey, she was never made to feel different for having cerebral palsy. Years later, she got her big break as a comedian when she landed a guest spot on Countdown with Keith Olbermann — and faced the harsh reality of cyberbullying, “There were people saying that I was disgusting, distracting…that they couldn’t even watch me.” To cope, she leaned on encouragement from her father, “He was the one who taught me that my disability’s not a curse. It’s a gift from God.” (Watch Maysoon’s TED Talk, “I got 99 problems…palsy is just one.”)

Stop treating soil like dirt. We can’t feed ourselves without it, and yet soil destruction is rampant worldwide. In a piece forThe Guardian, George Monbiot argues that there are many farms where contractors “rip their fields to shreds for the sake of a quick profit.” We are losing agricultural land at an alarming rate — nearly 12 million hectares a year. Over 90 percent of our food is grown in soil. Thus, the challenge of protecting one of our most precious resources is more important than ever. (Watch George’s talk, “For more wonder, rewild the world.”)

War’s lasting impact. In 2011, photographer Giles Duley set off to document the lasting impacts of war, years after peace treaties were signed. After a tragic accident in Afghanistan put his project on hold, he is now traveling to 14 countries to finish “Legacy of War.” In an interview with Time, he shared how he is capturing the poignant effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam, of sexual violence in the DRC — places where “whole generations of civilians have been traumatized by conflict.” His work shines a light on the trauma that can endure, even decades later. (Watch Giles’ talk, “When the reporter becomes the story.”)

A government for the people, even in the 21st century.Code for America released its 2014 annual report, where founder Jennifer Pahlka reflects on progress made: “I believe government can work for the people, by the people, in the 21st century. Now, five years in, we’ve seen what this remarkable community is capable of.” Going forward, she stresses that with the help of innovative technology, governments can truly work for everyone, including families applying for food assistance and budding business owners trying to secure a permit. (Watch Jennifer’s talk, “Coding a better government.”)

Ethics and an uncensored pursuit of truth. Historian Alice Dreger released a new book this month called Galileo’s Middle Finger. Exploring the world of scientific controversy, the book makes a case for an uncensored search for truth that still upholds ethics and patients’ rights. Much of the book uses Dreger’s own work researching intersex individuals as a case study. (Watch Alice’s talk, “Is anatomy destiny?”)

Are our lifestyles contributing to human evolution?This month, Juan Enriquez and co-author Steve Gullens release a new book called Evolving Ourselves. It takes a deeper look at how our lifestyle, amid increasing life expectancies and rising rates of conditions such as allergies and obesity, may affect not only our children, but many generations after. What does it mean for human evolution? What would Darwin say about all of this? (Watch Juan’s talk, “Will our kids be a different species.”)

Data v. Ebola.This week, global health expert Hans Rosling gave a presentation on Ebola for the BBC World Service. Marked by impressive visualizations, he tracked the start and spread of the disease through West African countries such as Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The outbreak began with a few scattered cases, then catapulted into catastrophe when it reached urban slums. He also highlighted the heroic collaborations between local medical doctors and international volunteers, using data to fight a rampant virus, even in the face of frequent electricity blackouts: “What was lacking in technology was added in motivation.” (Watch Hans’ talk, “Insights on HIV, in stunning data visuals”.)

My space twin. On Friday, astronaut Scott Kelly will head up to the International Space Station to spend almost a year in space, while his identical twin brother, astronaut Mark Kelly, stays on Earth. They’re the subject of a fascinating experiment to study the effects of space on the human body. Mark is the husband of former US Rep. Gabby Giffords, and together they gave a moving talk at TED2014: Be passionate. Be courageous. Be your best.

Have a news item to share? Write us at blog@ted.com and you may see it included in this weekly round-up.

Stephen Friend wants your genes — no, really. Today at TED2014 he announced the Resilience Project, a new crowdsourced effort to understand the quirks and patterns of human genetic code that control — and could help treat — genetic diseases.

Thirty years ago, the open-science advocate was working as a pediatric oncologist at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia when a man brought in his child for an appointment. “They both had their right eye missing, from a rare form of inherited eye tumor — retinoblastoma — and the father knew he had passed that on to the son,” Friend says. The sense of sadness and hopelessness that he saw in the father, that came with such a diagnosis unsettled and upset Friend, who says, “That moment changed my life.”

He switched his focus and turned to research, being part of the team behind the early discovery of a key cancer susceptibility gene, and also working on the very first cloning of a cancer susceptibility gene. Despite this research, despite living in an age of medical history in which there’s been “a seismic shift in our understanding of what genetic variations are sitting behind various diseases,” Friend says we still have far to go; the development of treatments for genetic disorders has not matched the speed of knowledge about the diseases.

If you ask, “‘Has [new research] impacted how we’ve been able to develop drugs?’ The answer is not really,” Friend says. “It’s as if we have the power to diagnose yet not the power to fully treat.”

How could more therapies, more drugs, better treatment be developed? Through a shift in focus, Friend says. “We do a lot of studying of those who are sick,” he says, “but maybe if what we’re trying to do is develop therapies for prevention … maybe we should be studying those who don’t get sick — who are well.”

Friend is searching for a very particular type of healthy person, however, those he calls unexpected strong heroes — people who carry the genetic code for a particular inherited, childhood disease, yet reach adulthood without ever developing it. Perhaps, Friend proposes, these strong heroes are carrying special mutations that are protecting them from disease. “The vast majority of [healthy] people are not carrying genetic risks,” he says, “but are there a few sets of individuals who are walking around with the risk that would cause a disease and yet something hidden within them is keeping them from exhibiting those symptoms?”

No matter the effort, it’s worth it to search for these people, Friend says. And that’s what he and his team plan to do with the Resilience Project. “Let us look at adults who are over 40 years of age,” he says, “with a family history of disease, maybe, and let’s go and screen them to find those who carry genes for childhood diseases — in hopes of finding those special strong heroes who somehow have avoided inherited childhood diseases.” Friend and his colleagues aim to analyze the genetic material of one million people all over the world — gathering data from different populations, in different environmental settings, with different histories.

With enough information, the Resilience Project could possibly discover the “genetic decoder ring” to understanding and preventing genetic disorders, Friend suggests. Data is key. So, as one of the Resilience Project’s partners said, “Let’s work on this in an open, crowd-sourced way to do this decoding.” All they need to start to lock in the pieces of a genetic decoder ring is “information and [people] with a willingness to say, ‘What’s inside me?’”

In today’s talk, pundit Sally Kohn shares what it’s like to be progressive,
Sally Kohn: Let’s try emotional correctness
gay and … working for Fox News. The key: emotional correctness, when people look past their political differences and try to understand what the other is thinking on a human level. It’s a vision so powerful that her hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania, has declared today — December 4 — Sally Kohn Appreciation Day.

Since speaking at TED@NYC in October, Kohn has parted ways with Fox. The TED Blog reached out to Kohn to hear the latest developments, and to ask how her thinking has changed now that she has some space from Fox. Below, an edited transcript of the conversation.

Fox News and I parted ways amicably and I’m looking forward to exploring new options. To correct a slight misnomer — and a popular one, based on the phrasing of The New York Times story — I am not with MSNBC now, I’m simply a free agent. Exploring my options. Feeling the wind in my hair.

What are you looking to do in the next months or years coming?

I feel very fortunate to be able to have an opinion. In the world right now, certainly in America, some people don’t even have the luxury of feeding their families or a place to live, let alone have an opinion that people listen to. So it’s a pretty privileged and powerful position to be in. For me, that’s always meant writing. I’ve been writing regularly for Salon and CNN, and I’ve been writing a weekly column for the Daily Beast. I’ve been continuing to go on television — on CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

But there are lots of ways of changing the world, and I don’t want to just have opinions — I want to be able to give my voice to really make a difference in the world and to make sure that others can be heard too. I’m not sure what form that takes, but that’s where I’m going.

Is it easier or harder to be emotionally correct at MSNBC, or another media outlet that has political beliefs closer to your own?

It’s easy to think that emotional correctness is some utilitarian trick to use only in some environments, but really it applies everywhere. When I’m on MSNBC, I want to be modeling the tone that I think all liberals should take — call it sharp-elbowed civility or disagreeing without being disagreeable. Everything that’s embodied by “emotional correctness.” We all need to do it more, myself included. So whether I’m talking about Obamacare to an audience that loves it or hates it, I’m still practicing my own emotional correctness — and hoping everyone picks it up, on both sides of the aisle.

Has your thinking about emotional correctness evolved or changed since leaving Fox?

There’s a school of thought that says if we were all kind to each other — if we all embrace this notion of emotional correctness — then we’d be glossing over our profound political differences. I don’t see it that way. I really don’t. I think we can have incredibly tough political differences and yet still be decent towards each other. I think this is the best practice for our democracy, and we can actually get somewhere with that. The jury is out on whether it’s the left or the right — or some new political formation — that masters this first. Whatever side grasps this first will win, because we’re all just preaching to our own choirs right now. Unless we find ways to expand those choirs, it’s just sort of intractable.

In your talk, you mention a moment at Thanksgiving where you butted heads with your uncle on political views. What have you learned from that experience?

I really think Thanksgiving and the holidays in general are a great time to remember the essence of emotional correctness. I might not agree with my uncle on everything, but I’m actually willing to listen and find that there is a lot we agree on. That can get lost if we’re just bumping heads on major things. During the holidays, you remember, ‘Hey, I love this guy,’ even if we disagree on the Iraq war, or tax policy, or if we vote for different parties. The things that he worries about when he goes to sleep at night and hopes for when he wakes up in the morning are the same things I think about. And he wants me to be safe and happy and I want him to be safe and happy. If you can take that and remember that microcosm and express it, it’s not that different with everyone else. We just don’t get to sit across the table with a turkey with everyone in the world.

It’s somehow keeping a little of that in your head before you press send on that tweet or email. It allows us to hear each other more, which I think is the way to get to real dialogue. I am a strong progressive. I believe very strongly in a lot of things and mission in life is to try to persuade people of the values that I believe in. But I don’t want to just be yelling into an empty room, talking to people with glazed-over eyes. So if we can remember that and meet people where they’re at — and start with a connection — I think that’s the key to being heard and being persuasive.

Peter Yang photographs 12-year-old Paloma Noyola Bueno for <em>Wired</em>’s profile about how her life was impacted by TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra.

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights:

A fascinating new article in Wired takes a look at 12-year-old Paloma Noyola Bueno, a schoolgirl in Mexico whose classroom got an intense shake-up from teacher Sergio Juárez Correa, with incredible results. So what inspired Correa to rethink how a classroom should run? Apparently, TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra (watch his talk on the School in the Cloud) and his bold idea that, given an encouraging atmosphere, kids are able to teach themselves incredibly advanced concepts.

Phil Hansen is hard at work on another crowd-sourced art piece. This time he is asking: How has philanthropy changed your community? Hansen is collecting answers now and painting them into a piece called the Art of Philanthropy, to be unveiled on October 30 to celebrate the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100th anniversary. In the past 24 hours, Hansen has gotten contributions from people in 30 countries, including an anecdote from Elton John.

The website Hello, tailor has uncovered a TEDxPacificPalisades talk from Kristin Burke, the costume designer hard at work on the new Sleepy Hollow TV series. In the write-up, the author defends the choose to have lead character Ichabod Crane, a time-traveler in the series, wear the same costume episode-after-episode.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/ted-news-in-brief-wired-profiles-sugata-mitra-while-andrew-bird-plays-a-concert-for-the-national-parks/feed/2ff_mexicanschool_largetedstaffPeter Yang photographs 12-year-old Paloma Noyola Bueno, in a profile about how her life was impacted by TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra.How we can build a more united United States of America: A Q&A with liberal FOX News pundit Sally Kohnhttp://blog.ted.com/sally-kohn-on-a-more-united-usa/
http://blog.ted.com/sally-kohn-on-a-more-united-usa/#commentsMon, 14 Oct 2013 19:40:10 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=82725[…]]]>

Sally Kohn, once known as Fox News’ liberal lesbian pundit, shares an idea for how to progress across political divides. Photo: Ryan Lash

Sally Kohn is both liberal and a lesbian — and, until shortly after this interview, she worked at FOX News. She contributed to the conservative network for three years and, during that time, sparred with some of the most conservative minds on television. She thinks deeply about how to communicate with people whose political perspectives are fundamentally opposed to her own — and, more generally, about how Americans on both sides of the aisle can find common ground to address pressing challenges. (Ahem, U.S. Congress.)

At TED@NYC in 2013, Kohn laid out an impassioned vision of a more united United States of America. It starts with the idea of “emotional correctness.” Forget political correctness, says Kohn. Being PC can make any one of us self-righteous and emotionally vacuous, as we check off the right boxes without really meaning what we’re saying. Emotional correctness, on the other hand, pushes past the semantic nuances of what’s being said to look at the intended meaning, and the underlying causes for that belief. It opens up the possibility for human connection between people with very different political leanings. Case in point: “I might think Sean Hannity is 99% politically wrong, but he’s one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met,” she said in her talk.

Kohn, who will soon speak again at TED@NYC 2014, feels strongly that the only way to address the issues facing our country is to sit down and have a real conversation — no more talking past each other or walking out of press conferences. We spoke to Kohn to get her thoughts on how to push past political polarization.

How did you end up at FOX News?

Oh boy. So, I was a community organizer for 16 years. I lived in New York, but I worked nationally, and I worked on immigration reform, gay rights, health care reform, you name it. And I left, mostly because I was having political disagreements. I thought we needed to have a left in this country that is separate from the Democratic Party and that doesn’t just have its lips sewed to the ass of the White House — but that’s neither here nor there. I left and was looking for something else to do. I was at a conference, speaking on a panel, and this woman comes up to me afterwards and says, “We’ve got to get you on television.”

I literally laughed at her. I was like, “You’re joking. I’m an organizer. We’re behind-the-scenes people.” To her credit, she was incredibly persistent — her name is Geraldine Laybourne and she actually was the first woman to ever run a television network. One thing led to another, and one of the people who trained me had ties with FOX News. A year into doing what little baby pundits do — doing all the different cable channels — I was on FOX News with Sean Hannity.

It was like being thrown into the deep end. But turns out, I liked it. It’s a lot like organizing, but instead of a church basement talking to 10 people you get a million people — more people than I ever could imagine. And a year after that first appearance, Roger Ailes waved at me on the street. I waved back, and he called me up and offered me a job. It went like that.

It’s been three years now, which is kind of crazy. I’m very fortunate and lucky — people work their entire lives to get to do this.

How do you think your work has evolved in the last three years? Have you seen a progression of how you think and how you communicate on TV?

I think in the beginning, if you’d asked me — and if you ask most folks, left or right: “What’s your point in going on television?” They’ll say, “to deliver my message.” That’s what I thought it was. So I would prepare, I would do research — and yes, that’s important. But what I did learn was that if people can’t hear me, then they’re not going to hear anything I say and it really doesn’t matter. It’s more important to find ways to connect with people — not just the host, but with people who are watching at home. They have real concerns. They have legitimate fears. And I have a lot of the same ones too. I’m worried about the world and the future for my child — I don’t know anyone who isn’t. Thinking about that first — that’s been an evolution.

If people come up to me on the street, it’s: ” I don’t agree with you but I really like you. You seem really cool, you seem fun, you seem nice.” And to me, that’s huge. That’s 90% of the way there. As opposed to, “Oh you’re another one of those crazy, angry [people].”

So this idea of emotional correctness, where did that come from?

I think the right often mocks, or at least expresses a lot of frustration with, the phrase ‘political correctness.’ But I don’t think they realize how much it pisses all of us off too. Being politically correct can be emotionally vacuous, if it’s just about saying the right thing and checking the right boxes linguistically. It doesn’t matter how politically correct you are if you don’t actually put any heart into it and actually believe what you’re saying. Political correctness is almost a superficial way of saying that we’re on the same team. But are we really? That’s actually not about the words; it’s about the emotional content.

On the flip side, you can be emotionally correct but politically incorrect. I’ve had people say some pretty messed-up stuff to me, but I know they didn’t mean it to be messed up. Of course, we need to be careful about what we say. Political correctness is important — we don’t want people walking around calling each other the N-word or the C-word. Believe me, I’m not saying “as long as you mean well, darling, then it’s all okay.” We actually need to stop ourselves from saying problematic things. But we can’t stop at that point. We might all be polite and talk nice to each other, but it’s dangerous to think that we’ve come so far on racial relations just because we no longer have overt racism. Instead, we have implicit bias and structural racism baked into our whole society.

To me, emotional correctness is about how to preserve political correctness while also scratching a layer deeper and trying to find real compassion and connection with each other. I think we’ve always needed that, but damn do we need it right now. The insults getting hurled back and forth from both sides of the political aisle are insane, and it boils down to an incredibly divided country. We forget we’re actually all on the same team. That’s what a nation is! It’s one big team, for crying out loud!

How has working with people who have such politically different viewpoints from you changed the way you think?

I don’t think people who disagree with me are stupid — that’s the big the thing I’ve come to learn. They’re not stupid. They have real, genuine, authentic, understandable concerns and someone else connected with them first in explaining why those problems are the way they are. They’re not vindictive, they’re not mean — well, sure, some are — but by and large, not even close. When you actually do meet people face to face — whether it’s viewers who stop me on the street or some of the hosts or people I’ve been on with — you realize, “Wow, we all put each other in boxes. We do it on both sides.” You start to break through those boxes and see people as much more complex. It’s really just a metaphor for the fact that our problems are a lot more complex. Our disagreements are a lot more complex than we’re imagining they are right now.

Do you think if we push past linguistic correctness to emotional correctness that we’ll be able to address the fundamental problems that we’re having?

Absent unquestioned evidence to do otherwise, I would like to start to see a country where we all assume that we want what’s best for each other. That we don’t have this me-versus-you, us-versus-them, zero-sum game. That seems disgustingly utopian to say in this moment, when it is so extreme and there’s all this polling saying we’ve never been this partisanly divided before, ever. But honestly, even ten degrees more in that direction would make such a difference. It feels really Pollyannaish to say, “We should do it on the left.” But you know what? Somebody’s gotta be the emotional grownup. And the digging in on your own side, that self-righteousness I spoke about in the talk, really doesn’t serve anyone.

On a more personal note, what’s the emotional toll that your work has taken on you? Every day you wake up and you’re getting hate mail — how do you deal with that?

Some days you don’t read it; some days you drink. I’m not going to say it’s easy, because that would be a lie! It’s surprising because you think you’d be able to dismiss the hate mail more than you could the professional person sitting across from you. But the hate mail is somehow — and you realize normal people don’t send hate mail and it’s definitely not [representative] but — the things people say. I mean, I just had someone wish that my child had been aborted. It really can make you feel pretty sad about humanity.

But the flip side is that you constantly have to renew your faith in humanity. And I guess I see emotional correctness as part of that searching for the good in each other. In spite of sometimes very overwhelming evidence otherwise, that connection is there.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/sally-kohn-on-a-more-united-usa/feed/12Sally_Kohn_speaks_at_TED@NYC_in_2013lizjacobsSally_Kohn_speaks_at_TED@NYC_in_20133 smart talks to get you through the continued government shutdownhttp://blog.ted.com/3-smart-talks-to-get-you-through-the-continued-government-shutdown/
http://blog.ted.com/3-smart-talks-to-get-you-through-the-continued-government-shutdown/#commentsWed, 09 Oct 2013 20:53:29 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=82654[…]]]>Heyyy Congress. We noticed you’re having a wee bit of trouble working out this government shutdown snafu, so we thought, hey, since you’ve got extra time on your hands and we’re taking a lunch break, we should totally hang. Want to come watch talks with us? We picked some just for you! Nice talks about getting along and talking it out and being super awesome standup citizens. Because we all get by with a little help from our friends.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/3-smart-talks-to-get-you-through-the-continued-government-shutdown/feed/16haileyreissmanTrita Parsi’s take on Israel warning the United States not to trust Iranhttp://blog.ted.com/trita-parsis-take-on-israel-warning-the-united-states-not-to-trust-iran/
http://blog.ted.com/trita-parsis-take-on-israel-warning-the-united-states-not-to-trust-iran/#commentsWed, 09 Oct 2013 15:19:21 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=82620[…]]]>

Trita Parsi spoke at TEDGlobal 2013 in June about the fact that, historically, Israel and Iran haven’t always been at odds. Below he comments on the latest enmity between the two. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

At the UN General Assembly last week, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned the U.S. that they were being fooled by Iranian promises of nuclear concessions in peace talks, calling Iranian president Hasan Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But the real threat, suggests Trita Parsi, isn’t between Iran and the rest of the world but between Israel … and Israel.

Trita Parsi: Iran and Israel: Peace is possible
In today’s talk, Parsi explains that despite their seemingly irreconcilable ideological differences, throughout their history both Iran and Israel have forged alliances when it was strategically advantageous. In other words, he says, “Enmity is not inevitable.” Parsi’s talk is especially relevant this week, following the first direct contact between an American president and an Iranian leader in over thirty years — and Israel’s subsequent condemnation of any real negotiation.

In Foreign Affairs last week, Parsi — who is the president of the National Iranian American Council — suggested that Israel should stop being uncompromising and learn to love the U.S.-Iranian peace talks. As he wrote: “Israel should moderate its rhetoric and stop encouraging Congress to undermine diplomacy through additional sanctions.” He suggests that Israel stands to gain much more from cooperation than petulance.

The TED Blog wanted to know what such cooperation would look like for Israel, so we asked Parsi to expand on last week’s article.

First of all, Parsi said over the phone, we wouldn’t see any direct friendly contact between Israel and Iran anytime soon (as he points out in his talk, a strategic partnership between the two in the ’70s was kept a secret), but what is achievable at this moment is reduced hostilities on both sides. On Israel’s part, it could be most helpful, early on, by not being unhelpful. “At the first stage,” says Parsi, “before you can actually create any positive relationship, you have to end the active animosity.”

Second, it’s in everyone’s best interest that Israel be at the diplomatic table rather than commenting on the action from afar, says Parsi. Iran might need Israel’s help to make a deal with the U.S., while Israel should be involved to ensure that it has a say in the agenda. And of course U.S. President Barack Obama, who has a critical friendship with Israel, wouldn’t want to make a deal with Iran that could be deemed anti-Israel. It’s a non-zero-sum game.

Would the U.S. ever actually break from this friendship? Says Parsi, “If Netanyahu adopts a posture in which he is essentially unappeasable and there’s nothing Obama can do to make Netanyahu happy, then at some point the U.S. is going to strike a deal without caring what the Israeli side says.” Though this may seem unlikely, Parsi believes it could happen if the American public is faced with military conflict, even in spite of the longstanding friendship between the U.S. and Israel.

Some, including Netanyahu, might argue that the potential for military confrontation with Iran is precisely why the U.S. should be wary — that the danger of Iran’s nuclear program is too great. Parsi shrugs off these claims, saying that while there is genuine danger in Iran’s program, Netanyahu has been “wildly exaggerating” them. Whatever danger exists, he says, “There’s really no solution that is superior to a diplomatic [one] based on inspections and verification.” Nor does Parsi buy the argument that Israel would seem weak or conciliatory if it stood aside: “The number of unnecessary conflicts that have started because of some weak leader fearing that he’s going to come across as weak is staggering. At this stage, that type of reasoning, which unfortunately does exist, I find unfitting for leaders.”

]]>http://blog.ted.com/trita-parsis-take-on-israel-warning-the-united-states-not-to-trust-iran/feed/5Trita-Parsi-at-TGthuhaTrita Parsi spoke at TEDGlobal 2013 in June about the fact that, historically, Israel and Iran haven't always been at odds. Below he comments on the latest enmity from the two. Photo: James Duncan DavidsonKevin Breel talks to the Today Show about his viral videohttp://blog.ted.com/kevin-breel-appears-on-the-today-show/
http://blog.ted.com/kevin-breel-appears-on-the-today-show/#commentsTue, 08 Oct 2013 20:31:18 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=82598[…]]]>

In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Kevin Breel reveals why he thinks his TED Talk has gone viral: not because his story is unique, but because it is so common.

Kevin Breel: Confessions of a depressed comic
Breel’s talk, given at TEDxKids@Ambleside, has been watched about 1.5 million times so far. In it, the 19-year-old reveals that, while he seemed to be living a great life as a high school basketball player, he was actually contemplating suicide. He urges people to break the silence that surrounds depression because “as much as I hate some of the places that my depression has dragged me down to, in a lot of ways I’m grateful for it.”

On the Today Show, interviewer Willie Geist asks Breel about this bold statement.

“Life is about duality,” Breel says. “There’s happiness; there’s sadness; there’s light; there’s dark; there’s hope; there’s hurt. And I think that, for me, nothing in my whole life has ever helped me understand more about myself, more about others, more about life than dealing with depression.”

In December 2012, Planet Money co-host Adam Davidson stopped by the TED office to talk about the fiscal cliff. At the time, the U.S. Congress was weeks away from a deadline to set a course on federal debt, and head-butting was at a fever pitch. As Davidson explained, the disagreement was simple: Democrats see increasing taxes, especially on the wealthy, as the answer, while Republicans favor lowering government spending. In the end, the so-called cliff was avoided with a last-minute deal.

But this morning, with Congress unable to pass a new budget and the United States government shutting down all but “essential” services for the first time in 17 years, Davidson’s talk seems relevant all over again. We asked Davidson to tell us why this budget standstill is even more concerning than the last. Here’s what he had to say:

It is shocking and maddening to watch the drama in Washington. I’d say the core issues here remain the same. The shutdown doesn’t represent the will of any substantial number of Americans — it doesn’t even represent the will of a substantial number of Republicans in Congress. It is caused by a couple dozen Congress-people who seem to have painted themselves into an ideological corner from which they haven’t been able to find an escape. Or, in pursuing their own narrow self-interest they are hurtling the country towards pain. Or, maybe, they actually believe their nonsense. It doesn’t matter. Twenty people shouldn’t be able to cause this much damage.

The core issues are the same, but the stakes are much higher this time. One period of insanity can be dismissed as a one-off blip, but this is beginning to feel like a new, semi-permanent feature of American governance. That is very troubling. If we convey to the world and to ourselves that we will lurch from self-imposed crisis to self-imposed disaster, we are doing something no country has ever done, that I’m aware of. We are deliberately damaging our status as the world’s reserve currency and as the world’s least-risky economy. This isn’t something that will happen overnight, especially since there aren’t many obvious competitors for that status. But if this constant battling over the most basic requirements of Congress continues, it will happen and it will make us all poorer.

As strange as it sounds, I find myself in the bizarre position of rooting for some kind of disaster fairly quickly. It’s not that I want disaster, but something that happens quickly and so painfully that congress never goes back to these shenanigans again would be preferable to making these suicidal moves a regular feature of our country. Quick and painful might be better than slow and terminal. Of course, not doing this at all would be best.

There is one slight benefit to having this battle over funding the government this week rather than over the debt ceiling in two weeks. However damaging a short-term shutdown might be, failing to raise the debt ceiling would be truly disastrous. Hopefully, this episode will be so embarrassing for the Republican Right that they will not want to repeat it in mid-October.

Congratulations is in order for TED Fellow Jon Gosier. His mobile app, Abayima, has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge, which funds innovative projects designed to get information to all corners of the globe.

While smartphones may be the norm in the West, most mobile phone users in the world — about 4 billion of them, to be specific — use simpler phones, often called “feature phones,” that don’t have a lot of storage memory, and can’t be used when a phone signal isn’t available. Abayima is an open-source application that turns a SIM card into a storage device, using every inch of the limited memory available on a standard SIM.

This means that a cheap feature phone can be used as an e-reader, for instance. And that, in locations where communication networks have been compromised or are under surveillance, journalists can communicate with sources safely using good old “sneakernet,” sharing information hand-to-hand via a small SIM chip.

When an earthquake shook Costa Rica in September of 2012, it took 60 seconds for the tremors to travel 250 kilometers north to Managua, Nicaragua. And yet just 30 seconds later, the first message about the earthquake appeared on Twitter.

In today’s talk, filmed at TEDSalon London 2012, Markham Nolan of Storyful.com shares why this represents a major shift in the dynamics of news media.

“As journalists, we interact in real-rime. We’re not in a position where the audience is reacting to news—we’re reacting to the audience,” explains Nolan. “We’re actually relying on them. They’re helping us find the news and they’re helping us figure out what is the best angle to take.”

Every minute, 72 more hours of video are posted to YouTube and, every second, 3500 more photos go up on Facebook. As Nolan shares, “The problem is when you have that much information, you have to find the good stuff—and that can be incredibly difficult.”

This has changed the way journalists must think about their job. Explains Nolan, “It becomes filtering all this stuff … Instead of going and finding the information and brining it back to the reader, you are holding back stuff that is potentially damaging.”

In this fascinating talk, Nolan shares how he and his team weed out doctored photos, determine the veracity of video footage and build rosters of credible Twitter users. To hear real-life examples of how they’ve done this with media created during the Arab Spring, Hurricane Sandy and the conflict in Syria, listen to Nolan’s talk. In it, he shares the hidden clues that Storyful investigators traced in order to parse the credible from the fake.

Below, Nolan reflects on how YouTube is increasingly becoming the place to go for news.

After giving his TED Talk, Nolan took to his personal blog to explain why he believes YouTube will soon overtake traditional news sources. For him, three recent events underscored to him that a major shift is underway. Writes Nolan:

Last Wednesday I told a TED audience of 250 people that the YouTube video platform was becoming the most important repository of documentary evidence about humankind in existence. It’s a bold statement, but I think it stands up.

YouTube is now becoming a real-time window on world events through live streaming. It is already the host of the world’s biggest, most accessible video archive of life on earth – from the mundane to the spectacular. Some of that is real-time documentation, and some of it is retrospective material. And it is growing at a phenomenal rate. By the time my short TED talk ended on Wednesday, there were 864 more hours of video on YouTube than when I started.

Three things this year changed how I view YouTube.

The first epiphany was the Democratic conventions in the US. I wanted to watch the event unadulterated, without commentary, without the partisan hackery or faux-objectivity of the networks. YouTube had a page dedicated to the conventions, where I could browse in and out of the live action as it happened, or, when things became a little dull, review videos from speeches I had missed.

What startled me about my own behaviour was that I hadn’t checked the TV stations to see how they were covering it and subsequently dismissed them, but that I made an innate choice that YouTube would be my first stop. I didn’t even consider Fox or CNN – YouTube was naturally the first place I went to watch the elections. I didn’t reach for the remote, I grabbed the iPad. That was a big shift. YouTube had always been the first place I’d go to for footage in retrospect, but for it to be my instinctive choice for ongoing news, as it was happening – that was HUGE.

Felix Baumgartner’s edge-of-the-atmosphere parachute jump was the second. Eight million people logged on to watch that little hop live via YouTube. News channels couldn’t devote the adequate time to it and would skip in and out, but Red Bull’s YouTube channel streamed the entire thing. The last minutes of the ascent were mesmerising. Joe Kittinger’s halting instructions to Felix in his pod were endearing and highly stressful. I hooked a laptop up to the TV to super-size my YouTubing, and watched the plummet, wondering if TV coverage of live events was on a similar, plunging trajectory.

The third is the ongoing war in Syria. Footage from Syria and the Arab Spring in general falls into a different category to most YouTube uploads- it is, arguably, evidentiary material. An entire war, to which external media were NOT welcome, has been documented via the clenched, phone-holding fists of citizens, soldiers and activists. And last week, the UN said that one particular event could, if validated, be considered a war crime. The evidence lay largely on YouTube servers.

We are now the most-chronicled generation in history. There has never been a greater level of unfiltered documentation of humanity (caveats coming) in history. It also gives us a window into countries that old-school news would never have shown. Through YouTube you get to see past media stereotypes to get candid glimpses from Saudi Arabia, central Russia, caucus states, Pacific islands and elsewhere. It must be said, however, that documentation falls short of being global. Swathes of the planet are not represented for reasons of culture or connectivity. We know, in Storyful, that there are ‘black holes’ for YouTube footage, due to connectivity, etc. Coverage from certain countries in Africa is abysmal. When we’ve gone looking for footage of news events in Congo, Mali or anywhere in the centre of Africa, it’s simply not there. Iraq is a dead zone for YouTube content. On the other hand, I’ve been involved in helping Google curate video from elections in Nigeria, Senegal and currently Ghana, all of which have been very active, and creative, in how they cover news. Given its need for decent upload speeds, a per-country/region comparison of video footage tallies could very well be an interesting benchmark for a global connectivity study.

The problem with YouTube being a gigantic and ever-growing haystack of video is that most people approach it looking for needles, and the means by which you find what you’re looking for haven’t matched the pace of the growth in volume. Organising the stack is crucial to make it navigable, useful, and potentially, to allow it blast a lot of TV into insignificance by making more content accessible to everyone, everywhere. The greater focus on channels, much vaunted of late, will hopefully begin to make this a reality.

How does this relate to the mainstream media? The media houses that recognise that organising YouTube into usable channels early are the ones will thrive. You can already see how some are adapting. Check out the New York Times, with their Timecast videos and wall-to-wall election coverage. See how the Weather Channel delivered non-stop Sandy via YouTube for the duration of the storm & aftermath. And look at the Wall Street Journal which has succeeded in integrating relevant, timely web video reporting seamlessly into what was a traditionalist financial newspaper.

News orgs can’t think of themselves as TV channels, or newspapers (with website) anymore. They have to think of themselves as content generators, connecting with the audience via whatever format people makes sense for them as they go about their daily lives.

In his latest project, “Balloons of Bhutan,” artist, computer scientist and storyteller Jonathan Harris explores how the Kingdom of Bhutan measures quality of life — not through Gross National Product, but through Gross National Happiness. In 2007 Harris spent two weeks talking to 117 people — students, farmers, road workers, monks, even a firewood seller, ranging from ages eight to 81 — about how they would rate their happiness. He then asked each person what one thing they would wish for and wrote their wish on a balloon of his or her favorite color. These balloons were strung up on display in Dochula, a sacred mountain pass, alongside thousands of brightly colored Buddhist prayer flags.